HARRISBURG
Faced with federal rejection of the state’s attempt to turn Interstate 80 into a toll road and with a $472 million hole in his budget by June 30, Gov. Ed Rendell on Tuesday called on state lawmakers to convene a special session on transportation funding.
”We simply cannot wait to replace these funds,” Rendell said, because scores of road and bridge repairs hinged on the I-80 tolls. Without that revenue, those projects face delays that could cost thousands of construction jobs at sites across the state.
On Tuesday, the administration and senior lawmakers confirmed that the U.S. Department of Transportation had rejected the state’s application for tolls on I-80, which spans Pennsylvania.
Rendell told reporters that federal highway officials shot down the application because they’d concluded it ran afoul of a section of a federal law that requires I-80 toll money to be used only on improvements to the interstate.
Rendell took issue with Washington‘s analysis, saying he believes the statute allows the money to be spread around to other highway projects, though not to mass transit.
In a statement, Democrats who control the state House said they welcomed Rendell’s call for the session because the decision to reject the toll application has a ”huge impact on roads, bridges and transit statewide.”
Democrats said they are looking for a ”comprehensive” solution to guarantee funding for ”generations to come.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, was cool to the idea, saying lawmakers need to work on mass transit during a regular session while taking up such thorny issues as the budget and an explosion in public pension costs.
Rendell did not propose a start time for the special session. But he did say he’d consider every option, including revival of a previously unsuccessful effort to privatize the Turnpike and a proposal for a gross receipts tax on oil company profits.
Rendell also said he’d like lawmakers to fill the half-billion-dollar hole by June 30, even as they struggle to reach an accord on his $29 billion budget plan for 2010-11 by the same deadline.
Asked why he believes lawmakers can pull not one but two rabbits out of their hat, Rendell grinned and said, ”Hope springs eternal.”
Pennsylvania can’t reapply to make I-80 a toll highway. That means lawmakers and the administration will have to find new ways to meet a $1.7 billion backlog in road, bridge and mass transit needs.
”There’s no court of appeals here,” Rendell said.
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Rendell should have known that the law would not permit tolling. Once again, the incumbents’ poor judgment puts the citizens of PA at risk and in a budget hole. Now Rendell will be claiming that this is a dire emergency and use it to leverage the legislature to raise taxes. I wonder if he didn’t plan this all along? These should be familiar tactics by now: He refuses to give up his pet projects and tries to figure out ways to twist everyone’s arms to first pass a bogus 09-10 budget and now to raise taxes. In the meantime, the disgraceful Barnes On The Parkway project that is costing PA taxpayers $137 Million is going forward in Philly. This Rendell/Fumo Vanity project in Philly proposes to build a 2nd rate replica of a Museum we already have with $137 Million in PUBLIC Funds. The Barnes Move is the subject of a popular documentary called “The Art of The Steal” that is making PA the laughingstock of the Country but Rendell’s Rich donors and a small misguided group of Philly Fat Cats HAVE TO HAVE IT like a bunch of spoiled kids and fiscal responsibility and PA taxpayers be damned. The Barnes belongs in Merion! Stop The Move!